


In Another Time

by Jcapasso916



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 05:45:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 15,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7422229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jcapasso916/pseuds/Jcapasso916
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Gabriel Big Bang. </p><p>When Sam throws himself into the cage Gabriel can't cope. As soon as he gets a chance he does something about it. By rewriting history and giving Sam the life he should have had.</p><p>art at http://archiveofourown.org/works/7422094</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Gabriel was almost glad that he couldn’t get out of bed yet when he got the message that Michael and Lucifer had been pulled into the cage by Sam. If he had been up, he surely wouldn’t have been for long. The tears stung his eyes as he screwed them shut, hoping to make the voices in his head stop. Hoping they were wrong, yet at the same time knowing that they weren’t. He had heard over angel radio that Michael had gotten a backup vessel, so Dean was safe, but that wasn’t the brother he cared about. 

Gabriel found himself wishing that he hadn’t replaced himself with a clone when he faced Lucifer in that hotel. He wished that he had let Lucifer kill him. Then he would never know that the man he loved was trapped in a place worse than death with no escape. He knew how skilled Lucifer was with torture, and Michael was nearly as skilled and they both would blame Sam for their new circumstances. His soul would be flayed alive until it just withered away, but they would make it last for centuries. They wouldn’t let him off that easily. 

Or maybe he wished that he had replaced himself with a clone sooner. Before Lucifer got the nearly killing blow and went on his monologue. Then he could have been there to talk Sam out of this suicidal plan. He could have been there to protect him like he was at Elysian Fields. But he had to let Dean talk him into near suicide. He could have just kept Lucifer distracted with clones, give them time to escape and then get out, but his clones couldn’t wield his blade, not the real one, and he let the hunter talk him into making an attempt on Lucifer’s life. An attempt that mortally wounded him and left him unable to help when they really needed it. Unable to prevent this travesty. Unable to save his Sam. 

It was another two months after that before Gabriel was able to do more than shuffle around his large house. He had leaked far too much grace, and it was slow to recover. Too slow. He had heard the rumblings of war in heaven over angel radio and turned it off. He couldn’t bear to hear about his brothers and sisters killing each other. He was torn on which side he would support anyway. He definitely didn’t want to apocalypse to restart, but doing so would free Sam from the cage and give him a chance to save him…somehow. 

Once he was able to transport himself again, he went to check on Dean. He didn’t know why. He didn’t particularly care for the brash hunter, but he was currently the only connection to Sam. Thinking about him hurt, but not nearly as much as forgetting about him would. What he found though, made him burn with anger. His brother is gone…to a fate worse than death, and Dean’s here playing house with a happy family like none of it ever happened. Dean of all people should at least have some idea of what awaited his brother in the cage. He had actually been to hell and remembered it and the cage was even worse, but no. He didn’t even care. 

Gabriel fought the urge to just destroy it all. Destroy Dean’s life like Gabriel’s life was destroyed. Like Dean’s life should have been. It wouldn’t be fair to the woman and kid though so he resisted…barely. He flew to the other side of the world before he changed his mind. He wouldn’t go back there. He didn’t need to see that. Didn’t need to have it thrown in his face that the world had moved on. That it had forgotten that Sam Winchester ever existed. 

He didn’t quite have the juice needed to pull out his full bag of tricks, so he would just have to start small as he dished out his just deserts to the people of China. He spent a few months there before moving on to Russia. He was aware that he was being harsher than he should be, but he didn’t really care. Someone needed to pay for the pain he was feeling and everyone who should pay was out of reach so he took it out on some pretentious bastards. He couldn’t remember the last time he worked so hard. He was going through two or three assholes a day. 

He had noticed some crazy shit going on in the world. Old creatures that were supposed to be extinct reappearing. New creatures that no one had ever seen before, not even him. The only explanation was that some idiots were playing around with purgatory, and had released the mother. Oh well. Not his problem. He did give into the urge to go check on Dean to see if he had noticed, but he was still with his happy family, completely clueless to the chaos going on in the world. Some hunter he was. Retired or not, he should be in on this, but that wasn’t Gabriel’s problem either. The only human he ever gave a damn about was gone. 

It was almost two years after Sam had gone into the cage when he felt the full power of heaven descend on his shoulders and sighed. There went his last hope. He knew what that meant. It meant that Raphael had died. He had failed and lost his civil war. The cage would stay forever closed. Gabriel was the last living archangel. Gabriel took his first break in a year and a half and flew back to his home and collapsed on the couch. He had to consider what he would do with this. 

He had no interest in returning to heaven and dealing with all the politics and responsibility. He had turned on angel radio long enough to hear Castiel’s message and figure out what had happened. Little Cassie was much more powerful than him now and wouldn’t take it well if he tried to unseat him anyway. He didn’t have the power of heaven though. That rested with Gabriel, and gave the last archangel a few more options. 

It took Gabriel all of a day to decide that he was going to use the power of heaven to rewrite history. But when. He considered going back to prevent Lucifer from being released, but that would still have Sam going through so much pain and horror in his life. Same with stopping Dean from selling his soul. If he was going to do this, then he was going to give Sam the life he deserved. The life that was stolen from him when he was just a baby. He briefly considered going back far enough to stop Mary from making her deal with Azazel, but that would mean that Sam would never exist. 

He knew the terms of her deal though and he could work with that. It was just for Azazel to get access to her home. Gabriel would let him in so that the deal would be fulfilled and then take him out, save Mary, save Sam, keep their little family together, and let Sam grow up happy and healthy. That was perfect. It would take a few days to build up the power necessary to rewrite the past. He just hoped that his vessel could handle it. Something like this would usually take the combined power of all the archangels. It was a safeguard to keep one of them from going off the rails, but as the last archangel, he had access to all of it. If he could hold it that is. If not…well there were worse fates than death.


	2. Chapter 2

Gabriel realized just how difficult it was to land correctly when wielding that much power. A simple travel through time was cake, but deleting everything that came after that point along the way was a lot more difficult. In the end, he was almost too late. He arrived in Sam’s nursery just in time to the cut open on Mary’s abdomen as she was halfway up the wall. He wasted no time in revealing himself behind Azazel and placed a hand on his head, burning him out. His meatsuit had already been dead so it didn’t matter too much. 

While he released his power to kill Azazel the lights in the room burst and the shadows of his six large wings flashed on the wall behind him and Mary’s eyes went wide as she fell to the floor. Once the demon had been neutralized he went to Mary’s side and placed his hands over her stomach as a blue light glowed from them and her wound healed. Once she was settled, and just watching him in wonder, he swept over to the crib and picked up the fussy baby. “It’s okay Samshine. I’ve got you. You’re safe now,” he cooed at him as he bounced the baby in his arms. 

Mary finally managed to collect herself. “You’re an angel,” she whispered in awe. 

“Archangel actually,” Gabriel said with a shrug. 

“Wh-what’s your name?” she asked. 

“If I tell you, you can never tell anyone else. Not even another angel,” Gabriel said and when she nodded he smiled at her and said, “Gabriel.”

“Gabriel,” she breathed out. “Why?” she asked curiously. She wouldn’t have thought that one mother and baby would be worth the attention of the mighty Gabriel after all. Even if she had ever considered that an angel would actually come save her she would have figured on someone lower on the totem pole. 

“Because I loved him once,” Gabriel whispered wistfully gazing at the baby in his arms. 

“What do you…” Mary started to ask before she realized that she probably shouldn’t. 

Gabriel sighed sadly. He knew that neither heaven nor hell would give up on their plans so easily, so she needed to know. Needed to be warned and protected. He would tell her everything he could. “It is a very long story, if you have time to hear it.”

Like Mary would ever deny an angel anything. Especially an angel that just saved her and her son. “Of course. Would you like some…um…coffee or anything?” she asked cringing at her own attempts to be courteous. 

Gabriel gave an amused smile and placed the now sleeping baby back in his crib, placing a ward over it that would prevent anything not completely human, except for him of course, from approaching the baby. He knew the chances of something else coming after Sam tonight were slim to none, but he was a little on edge about how close he came. Gabriel had already burned the demon blood from his system the moment he picked him up before it could settle in him, but he was still a bit nervous about leaving Sam alone. He saw Mary hesitate to leave him too and he said, “Don’t worry. I’ve made sure that he will be safe while we talk.” Sam didn’t need to be present for that conversation. Even as babies, humans could pick up on anger and tension and fear and he knew that all of those emotions and more would be making an appearance tonight. 

Mary trusted the angel explicitly, so dutifully followed him out of the room. She watched curiously as Gabriel stepped into Dean’s room and ran a hand over the toddler’s forehead before heading back downstairs and placing his hand, less gently, on Johns forehead on their way to the kitchen. “They won’t wake until morning,” he explained. He motioned for her to sit down and snapped his fingers, putting a mug of coffee in front of her and a mug of hot chocolate in front of himself. 

“Ok so, first things first. I’m not the Gabriel of this time. I’m from about thirty years in the future. A future where you died tonight.” He paused a moment to let that settle in before continuing. “As far as heaven is concerned I died a hundred thousand years ago and they need to keep thinking that. If they knew what I was doing here, they wouldn’t hesitate to execute me.”

“Why?” She asked again. She knew that she wasn’t being very eloquent tonight, but it wasn’t every day that an angel dropped in from the future and saved her life so she was understandably off her game. 

“If you’re asking why they think I’m dead, let’s just say that things in heaven got really bad after our father abandoned us and I couldn’t take it anymore so I faked my death and left. As far as why I risked coming back, like I said. I loved Sam once, and I don’t want him to meet the end that he did in my future. I want to give him the life he deserves.”

“So you and my son will be…um…together?” she asked not entirely sure how she felt about that. On one hand this was an angel, but on the other hand, Sam was just a baby. 

“No. My Sam won’t exist anymore. My Sam was pure steel, forged by sorrow and hardship and loss. I owe it to my Sam to make sure that he isn’t forced to become that man again.”

“What happened to him?” she asked, despite not wanting to know. She knew she needed to know. 

“After you died tonight, John became a hunter to get revenge on Azazel.” Mary gasped. “Both of your boys had a hard life. New motel rooms every week, on the road constantly, John was never around. Dean had to raise Sammy himself, even as young as they are now. When John wasn’t lost in a hunt he was lost in a bottle. He went off the deep end when he lost you.”

“I never wanted my kids to grow up hunters, and it sounds like it was even worse than normal hunters. At least they usually have homes and help with each other’s kids. I got out of the life for a reason,” she said angrily gazing over at her husband in the next room. 

Gabriel had little sympathy for John. He wouldn’t complain if she left him, but he wouldn’t push her to. He would just lay out the facts. He knew that they were having problems even in this time, hence the reason he’s passed out drunk in his chair at two am instead of in bed with his wife. “Dean became the perfect little soldier, following every order without question, as much as he secretly longed for…as he called it, ‘an apple pie life’. Sammy though, he was different. He never accepted it. He fought tooth and nail for any semblance of normalcy he could find. He ran away more than once before it finally stuck when he managed to get a full scholarship to Stanford.”

Mary beamed with pride. “I knew he would grow up to be smart.”

“He was. Very smart. And he got a nice vacation for a few years before Azazel came for his girlfriend. He killed her the same way he killed you. Dean managed to save Sam, but then they were both back on the road as hunters. Long story short, John died, Sam died, Dean sold his soul to bring Sam back and got a year to live, Sam went off the deep end trying to save Dean and then when he was gone he went mad with revenge. Ended up being manipulated into killing the demon that took him at the place and time of her choosing which opened Lucifer’s cage and let him out. The angels rescued Dean from hell though, for their own purposes, and the two of them spent a year trying to avert the apocalypse they accidentally started before Sam had the bright idea of allowing Lucifer to possess him, taking control and jumping back in the cage.”

Mary gasped, tears in her eyes. “How could you let him do that?” 

“I was nearly dead at the time from the last time I’d stepped between him and Lucifer. They probably thought I was dead. I was essentially comatose until about two months after that,” Gabriel said not allowing himself to bristle at her tone. “Basically, both heaven and hell are after your family to use them for their own ends. Both sides want this apocalypse to happen and your sons are the keys.”

Mary was reeling at the information overload. She could process hell being after them. They were the bad guys. It was a terrifying prospect, but it was at least conceivable, but heaven? They were supposed to be the good guys. They were supposed to help people and protect people. “Tell me more about this apocalypse and why my family is in the hot seat.”

“Well the big prize fight is supposed to be between Michael and Lucifer, both archangels, one fallen one not. At least not in the literal sense. Michael has figuratively fallen in every way though. He went rather mad when our father abandoned us and thinks that completing his plan for the world will bring him home. The union between the Campbell lines and the Winchester lines was long foretold as the end. Your offspring combine the lines of Cain and Abel making them the true vessels of Michael and Lucifer. It wasn’t supposed to happen yet though. Heaven has been manipulating the bloodlines to bring it about sooner. It was supposed to happen when the world was old and humanity was spoiled. It was a way to cleanse it and start anew. It’s way too soon, but they can’t see that or they don’t care.”

“So in your future the apocalypse started and my boys stopped it?” she said confused.

“That’s right. Sam pulled both Michael and Lucifer back into the cage, but ended up trapped with them. In the worse part of hell with two masters of torture that both blamed him for their predicament,” Gabriel said feeling his own tears welling up. 

Mary had tears running rivers down her face now. “What...what about Dean?” 

Gabriel tried his best to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “He found his happy ending. A woman and a kid and he ignored all the chaos in the world after that. I couldn’t though. I could never move on. When the last archangel other than me was killed two years later, I had the full power of heaven at my disposal and was finally able to do something about it. I erased everything that came after this night and reset time, and they will kill me for it if they find out.” He wanted to make sure she knew how important it was to keep all this secret.


	3. Chapter 3

Mary and Gabriel’s conversation was interrupted at that point by the arrival of another Gabriel. “What do you think you’re doing?” he addressed the Gabriel that had come from the future. 

“Fixing things,” Gabriel told his counterpart lazily. 

“You’re going to get us killed,” past Gabriel hissed at him. 

“Some things are worth dying for,” Gabriel told him with a fond smile. 

“We’ve been running for a hundred thousand years to avoid death and now you want to walk straight to it? When are you from anyway?” past Gabriel asked frustrated. 

“Thirty years in the future,” Gabriel told him. He knew that his half answers were driving himself mad and he was enjoying it. 

“And what could have possibly happened to make me so stupidly reckless?” 

“Well for one, I was the last archangel. The apocalypse was averted and both Michael and Lucifer were lost. Then there was a full civil war in heaven ending in purgatory being opened and a seraph going nuts and taking Father’s place and releasing the Leviathan. Do I need to keep going?” Gabriel asked smugly. 

“And why should we care about any of that? Let the idiots kill each other. It’s none of our business anymore,” past Gabriel huffed. 

Gabriel rolled his eyes and stage whispered to Mary, “I forgot how far I used to have my head up my ass.” She let out a nervous giggle at that and got a glare from past Gabriel. He turned back to the other Gabriel. “Regardless of your opinion, I will continue on my mission. The only way you can stop me is to kill me and I think we both know you know better than that,” Gabriel said smugly. 

Past Gabriel turned his glare to his future self. “On your head be it. I’ll be as deep underground as I can get and I swear if you get me killed too, I’ll kill you,” he spat as he left. 

Gabriel rolled his eyes again. “Such a drama queen.” He turned back to Mary. “So where were we?” 

“Heaven and Hell are after us,” she reminded him. 

“Right. So your next question is probably what can you do, am I right?” She nodded. “I can ward you from the sight of anything supernatural, well except for me of course. You’ll have to move away from here in case any of them have taken note of your location already. And don’t send up any open prayers. They can be followed to you. If you need to pray, then pray to me directly and don’t hesitate to pray if you get into trouble.” 

“I don’t know if we can afford to move,” she said hesitantly. 

“That’s no problem. I can set you up at one of my safe houses. I’ll make sure you have enough money for anything your heart desires. You can get jobs if you want to, but you won’t need to. Your lives will be your own,” Gabriel offered. 

“I can’t let you give us so much,” she protested. 

“Nonsense,” he waved her off and snapped his fingers causing a pile of wrapped hundred dollar bills to appear on the table. “I can just snap up any amount of money I choose at any time and as far as the safe houses go, I have dozens of them. Giving up one would be no trouble at all. Besides, I highly doubt you would turn me away if I actually did need that one for some odd reason.”

“No. Of course not,” she assured him. “Can I…have some time to think about it?” 

“Sure thing. It will probably be a while before anyone realizes that their plans have gone awry, but I won’t ward you until we move you to avoid suspicion if anyone’s paying attention.”

“And just pray to you if we get in trouble in the meantime?” she confirmed. 

“Yup,” Gabriel said with a grin. 

Mary just looked at him for a moment before she spoke again. “I just…thank you doesn’t seem like enough. Not nearly enough.”

“Just give those kids a safe and happy life and we’ll consider it even huh?” Mary nodded and Gabriel disappeared. 

 

Gabriel had been right about John and Mary having problems. John was coming home drunk most nights. His hours had been cut at work and he was drinking his sorrows away, and drinking away the little bit of money they had. He had even left them for a while not too long ago. She had begged him to come home, thinking they couldn’t get by without him, but now she wasn’t so sure. She could have a nice life waiting for her. She loved John. She really did. But who he was now wasn’t someone that she liked, and more importantly wasn’t someone she wanted near her children. Hearing about what he had done to them in Gabriel’s future did play a part, but not that much of one. Gabriel had spoken like the future had been reset. They could all do things differently this time around, but the big thing was, if she took John with her and things didn’t work out, they would have to uproot again and Gabriel’s safe house could be compromised. 

That was the big thing she had to think about. Gabriel was offering her a chance to keep her family safe. Of course she would take him up on it. The question was whether or not John would go with them. Gabriel seemed to think they had some time, so she would consider it. She would give John an ultimatum. If he straightened up, then they would all go. If not, she would take her boys and start a new life. 

Between the conversation with Gabriel and the fact that she was lost in thought, the sun was rising before she knew it. The first thing she heard was Dean’s feet padding down the stairs which then startled John awake. He turned to yell at the boy, but before he could get a word out of his mouth, Mary interrupted him. “Don’t even think about it,” she said with a glare. She wasn’t going to yell at him in front of Dean unless he pushed her, but she wasn’t going to let him yell at their son for just being a child either. If he wanted to sleep undisturbed, he should have dragged his drunk ass up to bed instead of falling asleep in the living room. 

John turned his glare on her and went up the stairs, presumably to go to bed, while Mary made Dean some breakfast and just managed to get him started eating when she heard Sam starting to fuss over the baby monitor. She brought him downstairs too and set him in his highchair. Today was his six-month birthday. He was going to get his first taste of strained food today. 

By the time she got both children down for their naps after lunch, John was dragging himself down the stairs and she called him into the kitchen where she was cleaning up the lunch mess. If she tried to have this talk in the living room, he would be distracted by the television the whole time anyway. Once he was sitting she started to talk. “I’ve had enough John. Enough of you coming home drunk and pissing away every penny you earn. Enough of you passing out in your chair instead of sleeping in bed with me. Enough of you snapping at Dean and ignoring Sam. Either straighten up or I’m leaving and taking the boys with me.”

“You’re the one who begged me to come back last month,” John said heatedly. 

“Because I love you and I don’t want to lose you, but I can’t let my children keep being exposed to you like this,” she told him. 

“And what are you going to do without me huh? You’ve never even had a job. How are you going to survive?” he sneered at her. This was the last thing he wanted to deal with when he had just woken up and had a massive hangover so he was being a little harsher than he should have been. 

“I’ll manage. I always do,” she shot back at him. She was finished with this conversation. “You have a month to get your shit together or I’m gone. Maybe sooner if you keep up this attitude.” 

“Whatever,” he growled and grabbed a beer and went to watch television like he had been intending to when he first came downstairs. 

Mary sighed in frustration. That hadn’t gone well at all. She knew that he was thinking that either she wouldn’t leave or she would come crawling back if she did. Hopefully he would actually think about what she said later when he was feeling more like himself.


	4. Chapter 4

It had been a few months since Sam had started sleeping through the night, so when he woke up in the middle of the night screaming she jumped out of bed, not missing the fact that she was once again alone in bed, and ran to the nursery, just as the screaming stopped. She saw Gabriel leaning over the crib and he looked up at her. “I hope you don’t mind. I sensed that something was wrong so I came to help.” 

“No. I-I don’t mind at all,” she told him with a smile. “What’s wrong?” she asked. 

“He’s teething and had a bit of a fever. I eased the pain and healed the fever. Not much more I can do I’m afraid. Can’t make his teeth come in any faster,” Gabriel said apologetically. 

“You did more than enough. Usually when he’s teething he’s up for hours screaming in pain. Dean was just as bad.”

“I’m glad I could help,” Gabriel nodded at her. 

“How did you know that something was wrong?” she asked. 

“I…well…I guess the closest comparison would be that I’m tuned into him. If something is out of the ordinary, I just…know.”

“So it’s just him? Is this because of what you said about the future him and you?”

“Yes and no. We have a bond. Have had a bond since the moment he was born, regardless of any feelings that developed in the future. It’s kind of like when you meet someone and you know right away that you’re going to be best friends type of thing. He would always have been important to me, whether I fell in love with him or not and it’s this bond that…tweaks sort of…when something is off with him.”

“So the other you…he would feel it too?” she asked curiously. 

“He ignores it. I always ignored it until we met in person over twenty years from now. Even then I only went to him when he was hurt badly or very sick. I didn’t bother with the little things.”

“Well you said they were hunters. If you bothered with every scrape and bruise you never would have had time for anything else,” she joked. 

“Very true. And those two were a magnet for trouble let me tell you. They could find danger in a padded room. You’re going to have your hands full with these rascals,” Gabriel joked back. Gabriel didn’t ask her if she had thought about his offer. It had only been a few days. They had time and she would bring it up when she decided. He glanced back down at the crib and saw that Sam had drifted back to sleep so he removed his finger from the baby’s mouth. The numbing he had put on the gums should last a while. “He’s back asleep. Good night Mary,” he told her as he disappeared. 

Mary peeked in on Dean before she went back to bed casting a glare towards the stairway before deciding to trudge down, just to make sure that John was actually home. He hadn’t been when she’d gone to bed. She saw him passed out in his recliner and scoffed before she went back upstairs and went to bed. He wasn’t even trying. It was like her ultimatum just went in one ear and out the other. She gave it a few more days before she reiterated her stance. Just to let him know she meant it. 

John just rolled his eyes and walked away. Like she could ever survive on her own with two kids. Even if she did get the guts to leave she’d be back. So he liked to have a drink with his buddies. What was so wrong with that? It’s not like he was beating her or the kids or anything. 

Still nothing changed, but Mary wasn’t going to throw away her marriage without making every effort possible. If she left him, she would do so knowing that she had done her best. She talked to him about it again a week later and apparently he’d had enough. 

“Jesus woman. If you’re gonna leave just go. You’ll come crawling back soon enough anyway.” He just wanted this ridiculous standoff to be over. She’d leave, realize she couldn’t get on without him, come back and leave him alone. 

She set her jaw in anger. “Fine. So be it. But once I’m gone you’ll never see me or your sons again,” she snapped as she stormed from the room. He also stormed out, headed for the nearest bar to get plastered and when he got home there was no sign of Mary or the boys. All of their things were gone too. 

 

After John left, Mary went upstairs and cried for an hour or so before she prayed to Gabriel. He arrived leaning casually against the wall with a lollipop in his mouth. “What’s up buttercup?” he asked lazily. He couldn’t sense any urgency in her prayer so he wasn’t too worried about something being wrong, and he’d know if something was wrong with Sam anyway. 

“If the offer for the safe house is still good, we’ll take you up on it. Me and the boys,” she said still sniffling slightly. 

Gabriel raised an eyebrow, somewhat surprised that she wasn’t taking her husband, but not completely. He wasn’t complaining either. He saw how much John had screwed them up the first time around and had no desire to see that happen again, even if they would have the more stable influence of their mother this time anyway. “Ok. So we just need to decide where you want to go. I’d definitely suggest leaving the country. Do you speak any other languages?” he asked curiously. 

“Why should we leave the country?” she asked him in return. She wasn’t going to complain. It didn’t much matter to her either way, but she would like a reason. 

“Eventually heaven and hell are going to realize that you’ve dropped off their radar and they can’t find you anymore. Any search efforts will likely be centered on the US. While they can’t find you through any means other than normal human means, both sides have human followers and they can get the word out to watch for you and pray/summon if you’re spotted. It’s far less likely that they would search other countries though. At least not until all options in the US are exhausted which likely won’t be in your lifetimes.”

“Oh. That makes sense,” she said with a nod. “So we should probably change our names too then?” 

“I would. The last names at least. Your first names are common enough that they shouldn’t raise any red flags. And I wouldn’t suggest going back to Campbell either,” Gabriel told her. 

“So something simple, like Smith or Jones?” she suggested. 

“Even better would be something more exotic. People always hide using names like that. Find something crazy that no one would consider that someone would make up or that someone from another country would make up.”

“I’m not very good at thinking of things like that,” Mary admitted. 

“Hmm. How about Piecaken? Or Crossanwich? Or Chocomel?” Gabriel started rattling off names as Mary’s laughter increased with each one. 

“Is everything related to food with you?” she asked through her laughter. 

“Mostly. One of the best things about life on earth is food. Especially deserts,” Gabriel said with a grin. 

“Ok,” she tried to get her laughter under control. “I kinda like Chocomel. Once I can manage to say it with a straight face that is.”

Gabriel chuckled and said, “Chocomel it is. But we still haven’t decided where you’re going.”

“Well the only other language I speak is Latin and I’m not quite fluent in it,” she admitted. 

“Ok so we stick to English speaking countries. We’ll want to avoid Canada and all the islands off the coast of the US. They are a little too close for comfort which leaves the UK, Ireland, Netherlands…probably be best to avoid Israel too just for the reason of a much higher population of people they can use to search. There’s also Australia and New Zealand. There are a lot of others but those are probably the best options.”

Mary thought about it for a moment. “Ireland,” she decided. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”

“Perfect,” Gabriel said with a grin and snapped his fingers, transporting her, both kids who were still sleeping, and all of their belongings and the children’s furniture to the house in Ireland. It was one of his smaller houses, small being relevant when dealing with Gabriel. It was still three times the size of the house they had just left. Gabriel quickly showed her to the rooms he had set the children up in, knowing that the young mother’s first concern would be her children. “We can move them to other rooms if you want. I just put them to either side of the master bedroom, which is now yours of course, for now.” 

“That’s fine. I like them close,” she told him. Gabriel proceeded to give her a tour of the house before he handed her a stack of paperwork, including birth certificates for the boys in their new names, the same and ID for her. All of them were from Ireland now. It also contained a bank statement and credit cards and a checkbook. Gabriel put an illusion of sorts on them so that anyone they spoke with heard an Irish accent, at least until their own developed. They could hardly be from Ireland if they had American accents. 

“Everything here belongs to you now of course. Do with it what you will. If you want to renovate, feel free. Here are some maps of the area and information about the town you lived in previously. You inherited this place from your Uncle Lee. I never spent much time here, but there are a few people who may remember me from years ago and that’s the name I went by.”

Mary just looked everything over, completely overwhelmed. She had enough money to live two lifetimes here and that’s if she bought everything her heart desired. Presuming her heart didn’t desire things like private jets and ten homes or crazy stuff like that which it didn’t. She wouldn’t have to get a job. She could just take care of raising her children. She probably would go out and get a job or something when they got older just for something to do, but for now, as young as they were, she was glad she wouldn’t have to worry about getting a babysitter or anything while she went out to work. 

“Can you think of anything else you might need?” Gabriel asked. 

“Medical records for the boys. Especially with Dean starting school next year,” she said and Gabriel snapped his fingers and brought those up too. 

“There are two cars in the garage that you can use. One is a station wagon for grocery shopping or hauling things or whatever. The other is mostly for fun,” Gabriel said with a grin. She probably wouldn’t care much for the cherry red Lamborghini, but she was welcome to it if she wanted it. “If you need anything else, just let me know and I’ll take care of it.”

“I can’t thank you enough for all this Gabriel,” she said. 

“Don’t thank me just yet. We still have to ward you,” he said apologetically. “It’s gonna hurt a bit.” 

“That’s okay. Just go ahead,” she said and Gabriel gave her another apologetic look as he placed his hand on her chest and she gasped as the burning sensation went right through her bones. After a moment he pulled his hand away as she panted for breath and he placed his hand back on her shoulder and got rid of the residual pain. “The boys…” he said worriedly. 

“I’ll have to ward them too. I can’t get rid of the pain during the process unfortunately, but I will get rid of it afterward. Thankfully it will only have to be done once and it will last them their whole lives. It can wait until they wake up though.”


	5. Chapter 5

As if on cue, Sam’s cries came over the baby monitor and Mary and Gabriel headed for his room. Mary stopped in the doorway though and didn’t go in. “You go ahead. I can’t watch that,” she said with tears in her eyes. 

Gabriel nodded and stepped inside, pulling Sam from his crib. He snapped up a bottle with some chocolate milk in it, hoping it would distract him at least a little bit and plopped it in his mouth. “I’m so sorry little Samshine,” he whispered as he placed his hand on the baby’s chest. The bottle was promptly forgotten as he screeched in pain. As soon as the warding was finished, Gabriel didn’t even move his hand before flooding him with healing to ease the remaining pain and Sam’s screams turned to sniffles and Gabriel got him to take the bottle back. 

Mary came in once the screaming had stopped for a moment, figuring that Gabriel was done. She wasn’t expecting to see tears leaking from his eyes as well. She raised an eyebrow at the chocolate milk in the bottle, but after being forced to endure that, she wasn’t going to deny him. Just this once. 

Apparently Sam’s screams had woken Dean as well because he padded into the room rubbing his eyes and asked, “Sammy okay?” He hadn’t yet noticed that they were in a different place than he had gone to sleep in. 

“He’s okay baby,” Mary told him.

“Who’s that?” Dean asked pointing at Gabriel. 

Mary looked to Gabriel who gave a slight shake of his head. Gabriel knew that a boy that young couldn’t keep a secret so big. “He’s a friend baby. He’s kinda like a doctor. You know how when you go to the doctor, sometimes they have to do things that hurt to make it better?” she told him and got a nod from the little boy. “Well that’s what he had to do to Sammy, and he needs to do to you too. It only hurts for a minute and then you get a treat okay?” 

“What kind of treat?” Dean’s eyes lit up at the prospect. 

“How’s a nice big piece of apple pie sound?” she asked him. 

“Yeah!” Dean cheered. 

“But first we gotta get you fixed up though kiddo,” Gabriel told him. 

“What’s your name?” Dean asked curiously. 

“Gabe,” he told him. 

“Okay Dr. Gabe. Is it a shot or something?” he asked finally starting to get a little nervous. 

“Not exactly. Let’s go lay you down and we’ll get you all taken care of while your mom goes to cut you a piece of pie hmm?” Gabriel said placing Sam back in his crib and taking Dean’s hand. 

“Can…can she stay with me?” he asked. 

Gabriel looked to Mary who nodded reluctantly. If it would make Dean feel better to have her there, she would endure it. “Sure thing kiddo,” Gabriel told him and the three of them walked across the hall. 

Dean finally noticed that they were in a different place. “Where are we?” 

“Your mom can explain that while you eat okay buddy?” Gabriel told him. They had other things to worry about at the moment. Dean didn’t really care too much and just shrugged and climbed up in his racecar bed and lay down. Gabriel placed his hand on Dean’s chest and said. “This is gonna hurt a lot for just a minute. Can you be a brave boy and try to stay still for me?” 

Dean nodded and Gabriel began the warding. He was keeping Dean still anyway, but he figured that feeling like he had some control might help him. Dean started screaming, but as promised it only lasted a minute and Gabriel once again flooded him with healing as soon as he was finished. “That’s it. All done.”

Dean’s sobs turned to sniffles as he reached out for his mother who wasted no time settling on the bed and pulling him into her lap. Gabriel reached over and ran a hand through the boy’s hair. “It’s okay, Deano. I’ll never have to do that again. I promise,” he told him softly, feeling nearly as bad as he had for Sam. 

Speaking of Sam, his brother’s screams had gotten him worked up again and after looking to Mary for permission, he went to retrieve Sam from his crib and brought him into the room and sat down next to Mary so the boys could see each other. Dean smiled when he saw that Sam had chocolate milk. “Can I have some chocolate milk with my pie too?” he asked hopefully. 

“Sure baby,” Mary told him soothingly only to have Dean hop down off of her lap and look at her expectantly. Apparently he was done being comforted and wanted his reward now. She chuckled and led him to the kitchen, Gabriel and Sam following. Gabriel placed Sam in his bouncy swing as Mary cut a large piece of the pie that Gabriel had snapped to the counter. Mary wanted to make sure that Dean knew the pie came from Gabriel to hopefully garner some forgiveness towards the archangel from the boy. “Make sure you thank Gabe for the pie. I told him what your favorite was.”

“Thanks Gabe,” Dean said beaming at him. 

Gabriel grinned back. “No problem kiddo.”

Once Dean had his pie and chocolate milk in front of him, he asked again, “So where are we?” 

“On that note, I should be going,” Gabriel said ruffling Dean’s hair and pressing a kiss to Sam’s forehead, before being pulled into a hug by Mary who again thanked him for everything. “You know how to reach me if you need anything,” Gabriel reminded her as he headed out the front door, not wanting to disappear in front of Dean. 

Mary turned to Dean, completely understanding why Gabriel didn’t want to be a part of this conversation and hoping that she wouldn’t accidentally say anything that would spill his secret. “We’re in a place called Ireland. This is where we will live now,” she told him. 

“Where’s daddy?” Dean asked curiously. 

“He’s not here. He’s not living with us anymore,” she told him with tears in her eyes. 

“Good,” Dean said with a nod. 

“Why is that good?” Mary asked shocked. 

“He makes you cry. I don’t like it when you cry,” Dean explained as if it should be obvious. Mary hadn’t realized that their marital troubles were so obvious to the child, but in a way she couldn’t help but be relieved that Dean wouldn’t miss his dad too much. “So where is Ireland,” he stumbled over the word. “Is it far from Kansas?”

“Yeah baby. It’s a long way from Kansas. In fact, we’re gonna play a game. We’re gonna pretend we’ve always lived in Ireland so if anyone ever asks, that’s what you tell them okay?” 

“You mean lie?” Dean asked with wide eyes. She had always told him to never lie. 

Mary sighed. She knew this would be difficult. “Sometimes lies are okay. When it’s to keep people safe. And people are safer if they think we’ve always lived here. You should always tell me the truth, but I know where we used to live, so you can always say that we lived in Ireland.” She hoped that got the point across. 

Dean was really too young to know much else that could be incriminating. She would teach him their new address and phone number which was in the paperwork that Gabriel had given them and not worry about it. She couldn’t help but wonder if, as he got older, he would remember their life before this at all. He was at that age where it could go either way. 

 

Once Gabriel left Mary and the kids, he had another issue to handle. He reached out and sensed where the current Gabriel was and flew to his side. “We need to talk,” he told his past self. 

“You mean you need to talk. You’re obviously not going to listen to anything I say,” past Gabriel grumbled. 

“Yeah whatever. Look. I’ll make a deal with you. When they find me, I’ll keep you out of it, convince them that I’m the only Gabriel so they never even look for you, but you have to do something for me,” Gabriel told him. He would probably do that anyway, but he knew that if he wanted to get anything out of his past self he would have to offer something in return. 

“What do you want from me?” past Gabriel asked with narrowed eyes. 

“I’ll get word to you when they catch me. When that happens, you have to go to Mary and the boys at the safe house in Ireland and let them know. And let them keep the house and cars there of course.”

Past Gabriel looked at him suspiciously. “That’s it. Just one trip to tell them and then I can stay away?” 

“Yep. That’s it,” Gabriel said smugly. 

“Deal,” past Gabriel agreed. “But only if it’s safe to go to them.”

“They are warded and the safe house is still warded too of course. It will be safe. I won’t give up their location,” Gabriel said firmly. 

“You know how persuasive they can be,” past Gabriel reminded him. 

“Yes I do, but it doesn’t matter. I will never give up their location, and you need to wipe it from your mind after you go see them too so you can’t. That’s part of the deal. Forget that there was ever a house in Ireland at all.”

“You can’t add things after the deal has already been agreed to,” past Gabriel said disgruntled, but at the stern look from his future self he sighed. “Fine. It’s not like it’s that much of a hardship anyway. I want nothing to do with that whole situation so forgetting about it is better.”

That settled, Gabriel headed out again and left his past self to his hidey-hole.


	6. Chapter 6

Mary was settling into their new town nicely. There were some cultural differences that took a little getting used to, but they picked them up quickly enough, Dean quicker than her of course. Dean also started picking up the accent quicker too and she was sure that when Sam started talking he would never know any other way. She took them to the park every afternoon when the weather was nice and got to know some of the other mothers in the area. She stuck to the truth as much as possible when talking about her previous life. Her, now ex, husband was a drunk and she inherited her uncle’s house and plenty of money so that she could just focus on raising the kids rather than trying to find a nanny and such. 

After a few months, she met another young single mother who was struggling to make ends meet and she offered to keep her children while she worked to save her the money. Abigail’s son Tristan was the same age as Dean and her younger son Kieran was almost a year older than Sam. She assured her that it would be no trouble. Mary loved children, and would gladly take care of two more. It wasn’t long after that when Sam woke in the night again and Mary, once again, found Gabriel at his bedside. “He had the flu. I took care of it, but I should check Dean too.”

“Thank you Gabriel,” she said sincerely. She would gladly pass on dealing with sick children if at all possible. 

Gabriel walked across the hall and placed his hand over Dean’s forehead as well. “He had it too, but they are both cleared up now.”

Mary considered for a moment if it would be easier for Gabriel to just heal the other kids too or for him to come back again if Sam and Dean got it back from them. She decided to just leave it up to him. “There are a couple other kids I watch during the day. I don’t know if they have it too, but Sam and Dean might get it back from them…” she let the sentence hang, giving him the option. 

“Do you know where they live? I can sneak over and take care of them real quick too, just to be safe.” 

Mary gave him the address but before he could leave, she said, “You know we’d be happy to have you around if you just wanted to come and visit sometimes.”

Gabriel smiled softly at her. “That would be nice. I didn’t want to intrude.”

“It’s no intrusion. Really. Also we’re having Sam’s first birthday party in a few weeks if you want to come,” she suggested. 

Gabriel’s smile got wider. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he told her happily. He had left a birthday present for Dean back in January, but hadn’t wanted to crash the party without being invited. 

“And Dean loved the train set you gave him for his birthday,” she told him. She knew that she could have prayed to him and asked him to come, but using prayer for such a frivolous purpose just didn’t sit right with her for some reason. 

Gabriel finally began to figure out that she had been hesitant to pray for him and when she told him why, he rolled his eyes at her and then snapped his fingers, creating a mobile phone for himself, decades before they would be invented, and gave her the phone number. Thankfully, as an archangel, he would still be able to use it despite the lack of cell towers in this time period. He wasn’t subject to such human limitations. 

After that day, Gabriel always stopped by for a few hours once a week or so. He started to get to know the other kids, Tristan and Kieran and took to them just as well as he did Sam and Dean. As usual he went overboard on Sam’s birthday gift, but since he didn’t have to actually spend money on it, Mary didn’t care. He had gotten Sam a little plastic rollercoaster that had a car he could sit on as it went up and down in a circle. It was just barely small enough for Sam which meant that Dean could use it too. 

Gabriel was a big hit at Sam’s party though. By the time it was halfway over he could almost always be found with kids on each hip and all the parents loved him too, mostly because he was so good with the kids and kept them occupied. In many ways, he was like a very large child himself. All in all, it was a wonderful day and more than a few people had somehow gotten the impression that she and Gabriel were a couple. She ended up telling them that Gabriel was her cousin to stop the rumors and hoped that Gabriel wouldn’t mind. He didn’t, of course. 

Gabriel had been lucky enough to be there for Sam’s first steps shortly after that. He was also there for Dean’s first day of school a few months later. He talked Mary into letting him plan Dean’s sixth birthday party and went all out, even having bouncy castles and pony rides. Sam’s next birthday was similar, but instead of the pony rides for the littler ones he had a petting zoo set up. He became a regular fixture in their lives. And greatly enjoyed watching the boys grow up. He and Mary became closer too and they ended up being more like brother and sister than cousins. 

Gabriel never missed a birthday or a holiday, and before long both boys were calling him Uncle Gabe and he just reveled in it. He remembered when the seraphs were very young and they looked up to him and he had helped to raise them and he had missed that feeling greatly. As an archangel, he couldn’t have his own children, so loved every minute he got to spend with others’, especially his boys as he took to calling them. 

He had been right about the Sam that he loved not existing anymore. The child that he was watching grow up bore no resemblance whatsoever to the man that he had fallen for. He was wrong about not loving him though. He loved Sam dearly. Dean too. Just in a different way. He loved them the way he would imagine loving his own sons and gradually spent more and more time with them. 

By the time Sam was turning five, he practically lived there. He wasn’t one to stay in one place for long, not completely, and often spent nights and sometimes a few days at a time traveling and having more grown-up fun, but most of his time was spent with Mary and the kids. 

He had gotten word about that time that heaven was searching for them and made sure to keep one ear tuned into the search. On the off chance that they started getting too close he would move them, but like he suspected, they were keeping their search focused on the US. They had apparently found John, who was now drifting in and out of homelessness and spent more time drunk than sober. He hadn’t taken the loss of his family well. 

Gabriel didn’t tell Mary that though. She had put John completely out of her head and there was no need to drag up old wounds. Gabriel’s cruel streak did have him taking a couple pictures of Sam’s sixth birthday party and a family picture of Mary and the boys and dropping it off to him so he could see how well they were doing without him. He had made sure that there was nothing that could give away their location, to human or angel, in the pictures first of course. He didn’t feel badly at all about the spiral that sent the man into. Needless to say, neither angel nor demon got any information from him on the location of his family, because he didn’t have any information to give them. 

Gabriel was greatly enjoying his life, as Mary, Sam, and Dean were too. He couldn’t remember ever being so happy. Gabriel had known though that it would have to end someday and sure enough, it was just a few months after Sam’s seventh birthday, just after Dean started secondary school, when he found himself standing before his brothers in heaven.


	7. Chapter 7

Gabriel had hoped to have more time with them. To be able to at least see Sam and Dean grow into men. Happy, healthy men with plenty of love and laughter in their lives. It seemed that it wasn’t meant to be though. This was the end for him. Michael looked at him with an unreadable expression. “Why would you do this Gabriel?” he asked. 

“Because it needed to be done. It’s not the time for the apocalypse and you know it. Father never intended for it to happen so soon.”

“It is not for you to say what father intended. The vessels have been born,” Michael told him. 

“Then it’s not for you to say either Michael. The vessels have only been born due to your interference,” Gabriel pointed out. 

“And yet they have been born. Which means that the end must commence. Just tell me where you have hidden them and you are free to go and we will chalk this all up to a misunderstanding,” Michael said hopefully. 

Gabriel gave his brother a wry smile. “Not gonna happen.”

“What do you want, Gabriel?” Michael asked, hoping they could come to some sort of agreement. He knew that their best hope of finding the family was with Gabriel’s cooperation. The littlest archangel had hidden himself successfully for a hundred thousand years after all. Hiding someone else for a century would be child’s play for him. 

“What I want is for them to live safe, happy lives, away from the interference of heaven or hell,” Gabriel told him, despite knowing that such an offer would never be on the table. 

“I’m sorry baby brother. That’s not possible,” Michael said apologetically. 

“Yes. It is. Which is why you’ll never get their location from me,” Gabriel said smugly. 

“Yes Gabriel. We will. Please don’t make me do it the hard way,” Michael begged. He didn’t like the idea of torturing his baby brother, but he would if he had to. Just like he didn’t like the idea of killing Lucifer, but he would do his duty. 

“Hard way. Easy way. It doesn’t matter. Do your worst. They will always be out of your reach.” 

Gabriel suddenly found himself suspended on a rack with cuffs on that blocked his powers. That’s what he had been waiting for. As an angel he couldn’t pray to other angels, but with the cuffs on he wasn’t technically an angel at the moment so he took the opportunity to pray to himself and let him know that he was caught. 

“Please don’t make me do this Gabriel,” Michael begged him. 

“I’ll do it,” Raphael spoke up for the first time. He had never liked Gabriel. Always been jealous of him. He would gladly torture the little pipsqueak. 

“Gabriel?” Michael said, asking one more time for a way out. 

“No,” was all Gabriel said and Michael sighed heavily and motioned for Raphael to do as he wished and he walked quickly from the room. 

Gabriel considered himself lucky. Michael was a master at torture. He was slow and subtle, wringing every bit of pain possible from his target. He was an artist. Raphael was far blunter and uncontrolled. Not only that, but it would be far easier to goad Raphael into just killing him. Michael would never take the bait. He didn’t expect it to be easy or quick, but it would happen eventually. 

 

Past Gabriel got the prayer from his future self and sighed. He was surprised it took this long really. He made sure the woman was alone and popped over to see her. 

Mary could tell the moment that he appeared that it wasn’t her Gabriel just from the way he carried himself. “What are you doing here?” she asked nervously. 

“I have been asked to deliver a message. Gabriel is gone. He was caught out by heaven,” He handed over a few envelopes. “Letters to you and the children,” he explained. He completely ignored the tears streaming down Mary’s face. He had no intention of getting involved any more than he already had. “As per my agreement with him, this house and everything in it still belong to you and after I leave I will no longer remember anything about it or you,” he finished his spiel before he disappeared. He needed to get out of there, before what was left of his heart pulled him into her grief and he ended up falling down the same rabbit hole that his future self had. 

Mary was glad that both boys were still at school as she sank into the kitchen chair holding the envelopes tightly in her hand. She couldn’t bring herself to open hers yet though as the tears kept coming. He had implied in the beginning that he would be caught eventually, but she had never really considered the possibility. She was always sure they would have more time. But now he was gone. 

She lost track of time and before she knew it, Sam and Dean were running in the door from school. They stopped dead in their tracks when they saw her crying at the table. “Mommy?” Sam asked. “What’s wrong?” 

She didn’t speak for a moment. She just pulled them both into tight hugs. Even eleven-year-old Dean didn’t try to squirm away this time, sensing that something was really wrong. He was the first to notice a conspicuous absence. “Where’s Uncle Gabe?” Dean asked and his mother just held them tighter and Dean was suddenly sure he didn’t want the answer to that question. 

“He’s…he’s…gone,” she choked out. 

Dean found his eyes filling with tears at that too, but seven-year-old Sam didn’t fully understand yet. “Gone where?” Sam asked. “When will he be back.”

“He’s not coming back,” Dean said bluntly. “Is he?” He wasn’t entirely sure if his mother had meant that he’d left them or that he’d died. He knew that Uncle Gabe would never intentionally leave them, but better that than him being dead. 

“He’s…dead,” Mary managed to get out. Sam had lost his dog last year when it got ran over so he was familiar with the concept of death. Plus, one of his classmates had lost her grandmother over the summer. Thus, those words broke the dam for Sam as well and he was clinging to his mother just as tightly as he broke down in tears too. Dean tried his best to be strong for them, knowing that it was his job now, but he couldn’t help his own tears and they just stayed like that, holding each other and crying for a good long while. 

Mary finally managed to get control over herself and wiped her face. “I’m so sorry boys.”

“Me too mom,” Dean said sadly. Sam was still sitting in her lap crying, but Dean had moved off when her grip on him had eased and wiped his own tears. “What’s that?” he asked pointing to the envelopes. 

“He…left letters for us,” she told him. 

“He knew…?” Dean trailed off. 

She didn’t know how else to explain it without telling them more than they needed to know so she took a deep breath and told them the biggest lie she ever had. “He was sick for a long time. He didn’t want anyone to know. We…we thought he would have more time though. It wasn’t supposed to be so soon,” she said shakily. 

“He didn’t seem sick,” Dean said shocked. 

“It wasn’t something that anyone could see. And he made sure that no one knew.”

“But you knew,” he said accusingly. 

“He swore me to secrecy. We planned on telling you when you were older. We thought he would at least be able to see you two grow up, but these things sometimes sneak up on you.”

Dean wasn’t too happy about it being hidden from him, but there was nothing he could do about it now anyway so he opted not to cause his mother any more grief over it. He turned his eyes back to the envelopes. “Can I…” 

“Of course,” she told him. “I should probably read mine too. Do you want to read yours Sammy?” She asked softly seeing that Sam was finally starting to sniffle more than sob. He nodded and took his letter, not getting off of her lap as he opened the envelope. 

When Mary opened hers, the first thing she noticed was the key that fell out. She figured it would be explained in the letter.


	8. Chapter 8

Mary’s tears flowed fresh again as she read her letter from Gabriel. 

Mary,

If you’re reading this, then I’m gone. I’m sorry. Whenever you end up getting this it still holds true that I wish I’d had more time. I’d also like to apologize for the other me. I’m sure he was brusque and not very comforting. I hope he had the sense to go to you when you were alone. If not, apologize to the boys for me too. You need to know that the last few years helping you raise your family were the happiest of my long life. I don’t regret anything and I’d do it all over again if I could. Finish what I started and give them a happy life. 

You will still be safe there at the house. The other Gabriel will never remember anything about it once he leaves you. I have his word and know it’s good, so they won’t be able to find you. On the off chance that they do, pray to the other me. Hopefully he’ll pull his head out of his ass long enough to do something about it, but them finding you is a very slim chance so don’t worry too much. 

They key you have there is to a storage unit. In it you’ll find gifts for all the boys birthdays and Christmases until they are twenty-one. Part of their twenty-first birthday presents are access to their own bank accounts that I set up for them years ago, so don’t feel the need to save for them. I know they are smart and well grounded, and will likely work hard at whatever their chosen professions, but this way they can follow their dreams instead of their paychecks, just like you. You already have access to their college funds and on the off chance they don’t decide to go, you can decide what to do with that money taking into account whatever circumstances surround their decision. 

This is all just stupid stuff that needs to be said when all I really want to say is that I love you, Mary. I’ve had a lot of brothers and sisters, as you know, but you’re easily my favorite sister. I know this is probably a moot request, but don’t mourn for me. Live and be happy. Fill your life with laughter and fun just like I always tried to. Take care of yourself and those boys. 

Love always,

Gabriel

 

Dean tried his best to hold back his tears as he read his letter too. 

Dean,

I know that you’re probably pretty upset about not being told that I may not always be there, but don’t give your mom a hard time about it. I only ever even mentioned it to her once, and that was a long time ago and I didn’t want her to tell either of you boys until Sam was old enough to understand. I didn’t want you to have to keep it from him too. I hope you understand and don’t think too harshly of me for it. 

I know that you’re going to feel like you have to be the man of the house now, but don’t ever forget to just be a boy too. These are the best times of your life. Don’t try to grow up too fast. Be good. Be safe. But most importantly, be happy. Never be afraid to follow your dreams, wherever they may lead. You’re a smart kid and you have a good heart, and I know that you’ll make a great life for yourself. I wish I could be there to see it. I love you, kiddo. Always. 

Gabriel

 

Sam struggled a bit with his letter. He read very well for his age, but he was still only seven years old. His was similar to Dean’s but more tailored to his personality. 

Sammy,

I’m sorry that I had to leave you. I’m sorry that I can’t see you grow up into the wonderful man I know you’ll become. I always wanted more time, but truth is, no matter how much I had it would never have been enough. You are an amazing kid, and every day I got to be with you and your family was a precious gift. Don’t cry too much for me kiddo. Remember the good times. All the laughter and fun, and never let anything dampen your spirit. Your greatest gift is your heart, Sammy. Follow it. Yes, you have a brilliant mind, but it can only get you so far before you have to let your heart take over. Have a good life and always be happy. I love you Samshine. Always.

Gabriel

 

While they were reading their letters, Gabriel was losing his battle with staying silent in the face of his torture. As the first scream was torn from his throat, he saw the smug look on Raphael’s face. “Where are they Gabriel?” he sneered. 

“Jupiter,” Gabriel spat earning himself another cut with the archangel blade, directly down his abdomen. 

“Where. Are. They?” 

“Uranus,” Gabriel managed a smug smirk before another scream was torn from him. 

“I can keep this up forever, Gabriel,” Raphael threatened. 

“So can I,” Gabriel gasped. 

“Where are they?” Raphael asked again as he dragged his blade down the side of Gabriel’s face opening him to the bone. 

Gabriel suddenly had an idea that would keep them even safer. He pretended to give in. “Okay. Fine. I made a new dimension for them.” If they were looking for another dimension, then this one would be that much safer. 

Raphael’s eyes widened slightly. That he could believe. That was just like Gabriel. They were finally get somewhere and it had only taken a day. “How do we find this dimension?”

“You don’t,” Gabriel told him, earning himself another slash. 

“That’s not the correct answer,” Raphael said cruelly. 

“Well it’s the only one you’re going to get,” Gabriel snapped. 

Michael came in the room after that, looking everywhere but at his baby brother strapped to the rack. “Did you get anything?” he asked Raphael. 

“Just that he stashed them in a dimension of his own devising,” Raphael said apologetically, annoyed that he didn’t get more information than that. 

“Very well. Since he gave us something, he can have a break for a few hours. I need your assistance with another matter,” Michael said leading Raphael out of the room. 

Gabriel breathed a sigh of relief. He was glad that they had bought his lie about the other dimension and that he was getting a break. He hadn’t expected one, but this opened up a new opportunity. Not for escape. Only an archangel could remove these cuffs, but he had sensed the warding around the room before they had been put on. Any angel could get in and if he could save himself any more of this then he would do so. 

He closed his eyes and sent up a silent prayer to the one brother he thought might actually help him. “Castiel, this is your brother Gabriel. Come to me, please.”

Castiel appeared in the room next to Gabriel. He hadn’t fully believed the prayer, but he could tell that it had come from heaven, though how an archangel was managing to pray he didn’t understand until he saw him cuffed to the rack. Gabriel had always been his favorite brother. The only one who didn’t make fun of him for his differences. The only one who saw value in him as more than just a good soldier and seeing him here like this was heartbreaking. “Gabriel! How…”

“I need your help Cassie,” Gabriel told him. 

“Who has done this to you? Father?” Castiel asked. 

“No. Father left a very long time ago. Michael and Raphael. I dared to disagree with them,” Gabriel told him. 

“Father is…gone?” Castiel said heartbrokenly. 

“Yes, he’s been gone, but I’m still here and I need your help,” Gabriel said impatiently. He didn’t have time for a breakdown right now. 

“I…I can’t get these cuffs off you. I can’t…can’t free you,” Castiel said sadly. 

“I know Cassie. It’s okay,” Gabriel said soothingly. “I need you to kill me.”

“What? No! I couldn’t…please don’t ask this of me brother.”

“There is no one else I can ask. I can’t take much more of this before I’m lost in all but body anyway. Please end it,” Gabriel said softly. 

“H-how,” Castiel stuttered as his eyes filled with tears. 

“Take my hand and I’ll allow you to summon my blade,” Gabriel told him. He couldn’t summon it himself because of the cuffs, but he could allow someone else access to it still. 

Castiel reluctantly did so. “They will know,” he said worriedly. 

“They won’t know who. When you’re done, take my blade and destroy it. Nothing will link back to you. No one else knows I’m even here so they can’t risk a full inquiry without causing unrest.” If they truly were getting orders from their father, he would be able to see the truth of the matter without need of an inquiry and if they weren’t then there would be the question of why they were holding another archangel without his permission, so they would never risk anyone else finding out. 

“I’m so sorry brother,” Castiel said as he raised the blade.

“Thank you,” Gabriel said sincerely as he closed his eyes and waited for the blow. Had he known that Castiel would rip out his grace and fall after the deed was done then he may have hesitated to ask it of him, but the seraph knew that it would be the best way to keep himself safe, and he knew that falling would remove his memories as well. The knowledge that his father had abandoned them, combined with his last act as an angel, were just two of the things that he would rather not remember.


	9. Chapter 9

Mary had warned the boys that Gabriel had left birthday and Christmas presents for them so they wouldn’t be shocked and fall apart on Christmas day. She didn’t tell them about the money yet of course. They would find that out when they were twenty-one. Most of the presents had been wrapped so she didn’t know what they were, but the cars for their sixteenth birthdays weren’t wrapped and she was shocked at the extravagance. He had even taken into consideration their different personalities. Dean had a cherry red Ferrari Spider convertible and Sam had a more sedate, but no less fancy, black Mercedes in a model that she wasn’t familiar with. She was sure, knowing Gabriel, that these would be the most recent models on their birthday, him being in a unique position to know what cars would be coming out when. 

Each of the gifts were labeled with a name and which birthday or Christmas they were for, so she just had to search through for the right one. Thankfully, with the exception of the cars which were in the center, everything was organized chronologically otherwise it would have taken forever. There was a lot there and most of it wasn’t small. She found at the first Christmas after Gabriel’s death that though there was one box, there were multiple presents in that box, each wrapped individually. He had always showered the boys with gifts, so that was no surprise really. She would have been more surprised if there were only one gift. He had a system of giving them one fancy gift and a lot of smaller gifts, sometimes related to the big one, sometimes not. Like the video game system they got and about twenty video games for it. 

Mary had been torn over ever telling her sons the truth about their life and the fact that they were on the run, but Gabriel had made a good point. For now, they would listen to her about the dangers of prayer but as they got older and started thinking for themselves more, the world would eventually convince them that there was nothing wrong with prayer and that it was actually a good thing. They needed to know why it was dangerous for them. The trick was finding the right age. She desperately wished that Gabriel were still here for this. She desperately missed the archangel. The boys did too. 

It was just after Dean’s thirteenth birthday when she sat them down. She would have liked waiting until Sam was a little older, but she couldn’t tell one and not the other and Dean was a teenage now. He would be relying more on the rest of the world than his mother. She may still have some time, but it was better to be too soon than too late. She would never forgive herself if she was too late. “You know how I always told you boys to never pray? That it was too dangerous?” She got nods from both of them. “I’m sure you’ve heard other people talking about prayer and that it’s a good thing.” She again got nods. “I’m going to explain why it’s dangerous for us to pray. I know it’ll be a lot to take in, but you need to know why you can never pray.”

“It’s okay mom. I’m not a kid anymore. I can take it,” Dean told her. He was more than curious. Had been for a while, but was afraid to ask. 

“Me too,” Sam piped up. Dean rolled his eyes but Mary just gave him an indulgent smile. 

“I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but the angels…they aren’t good guys. In fact they have been looking for us since you were a baby Sam.”

“Why?” Dean asked skeptically. 

“It’s a very long story, but they want to use you two to bring about the end of the world and they need me out of the way to do it. They tried to have me killed when you were four. That’s when Gabriel stepped in and moved us here to hide.”

“Wait…so Gabriel…” Sam furrowed his brow deep in thought. 

“Gabriel was an archangel. He didn’t like what they were planning and wanted to keep us safe.”

“I knew my arm was really broken when I fell out of the tree!” Sam said. 

Mary nodded. “Yes. It was. Gabriel healed it. I told him that he couldn’t keep healing you boys of the obvious stuff like that if he wanted to keep his involvement a secret, but he couldn’t stand seeing either of you in pain.”

“Why wouldn’t he tell us?” Dean asked disgruntled. 

“Because you were too young to keep a secret that big. And you shouldn’t have had to. He wanted to be the one to tell you, but…” she trailed off. 

“So…when he died…he wasn’t sick was he?” Dean asked sadly. 

“No. He wasn’t. The other angels caught him.”

“They killed him?” Sam sniffled. 

“They probably would have tortured him first trying to find us,” Dean said bluntly. 

“Dean!” Mary said scandalized. She had never intended on telling them that. She had refused to even think about it herself. 

“What? If they didn’t find us that means he didn’t tell them anything. He deserves credit for that,” Dean said determinedly, but was suddenly sorry when he saw the tears welling up in his mother’s eyes and the tears on his little brother’s face. He was right, but it probably wasn’t the best time. 

“So he knew they would catch him?” Sam asked through his sniffles.

“He knew that he couldn’t hide from them forever, unlike us. Like I said then, he had hoped to at least see you boys grow up, but it didn’t turn out that way.”

Mary wasn’t sure if she should tell them anything about the time travel or why, but then she decided that they needed to know that if they were ever in real trouble they could try to pray to Gabriel. It was unlikely the other version of the archangel would come, but there was a chance, however slim and if they were in that much trouble, she would take any chance she could get. “There’s more to the story too,” she said as she brought herself back under control.

“More?” Sam asked wiping his face. 

“Yes. The reason that Gabriel was so intent on stopping it was because he had seen what happened. He came back from the future to change it.”

“What happened in the future?” Dean asked curiously. 

“I died that night when Sam was six months old. Your father…well he wasn’t a very good father and you boys had a very tough life with a very nasty ending when the angels were finished with you.”

“What kind of nasty ending? What was rough about our life? What happened?” Dean asked wanting details. 

“No. I’m not going into any more detail than that. You don’t need to know and I don’t want to think about it. I’m only telling you because you need to know that there is another version of Gabriel out there somewhere. He’s not very nice and doesn’t like us very much, but if you ever get into real trouble, like life or death trouble, you can try praying to him specifically and he might come. I wouldn’t hold out too much hope, but if it’s that or your life, at least it’s worth a try.” 

Dean opened his mouth to argue some more but a glare from his mother shut him down. She had done what she intended to do though. She was sure now that neither of them would ever dare try to pray to anyone except for Gabriel. She hoped she had gotten the point across that they should only pray to him in case of emergency, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world if she didn’t get that one across. 

Both boys though felt betrayed by the other Gabriel and had no interest in praying to him unless they had to. As far as they were concerned he should have been involved with them too, or at least come to try and make them feel better after their Gabriel was gone. They had been hurt or sick more than once since Gabriel’s death and he’d never come to help so why should they care about him. He was just an imposter to them and better that he not be around. 

Dean was enraptured with his new car for his sixteenth birthday. Mary secured a promise from him to be careful and responsible with it or she would take it away from him again. It turns out that no matter how careful and responsible someone is, there are always people out there who aren’t. It was just before Christmas when a drunk driver ran a red light and rolled right over Dean’s fancy new car. Neither Mary nor Sam cared much about the state of the car though. Their focus was on the teenager in the hospital bed. 

Dean had yet to regain consciousness after the accident and the doctors weren’t hopeful, but they were running tests and doing what they could. Mary and Sam never left the hospital. On Christmas eve, when the doctors finally told them that there was nothing more they could do and it may be time to think about pulling the plug, Mary broke down and prayed to Gabriel. 

Gabriel heard the desperation in her voice but resisted the urge to go to her. He may have forgotten all about where they lived, but he still remembered her and the children. He remembered how much his future self cared about them. He could follow her prayer anytime. He would go check out what was going on later and see if it was something he wanted to get involved in.

When Gabriel arrived in the hospital room, completely invisible to see Mary and Sam sleeping next to Dean’s bed, he looked closely at the boy and could see that the only reason he was still alive were the tubes and wires the other humans had stuck in him. It had kept his soul anchored to his body at least. It would have been easy to walk away. It was none of his concern. In fact, it might be better in the long run if the boy died. Once he was dead he could no longer be used by Gabriel’s brothers. Their father had placed protections over all human souls in heaven that prevented angels from interfering in any way. 

Before he left, he remembered his future self though, and how much he had sacrificed, even his own life, to give these people a chance to live long and happy lives and he couldn’t walk away. Even that wouldn’t be enough to convince him to stand between them and his brothers, but he could heal a simple car accident. He reached over a brushed his hand over the boy’s forehead before disappearing. 

Mary was jolted awake when the alarms went off and Dean was sitting up gasping for breath, unable to breathe around the tube in his throat. The doctors rushed in and removed the tube then proceeded to check all his vitals as they chattered about how this shouldn’t be possible and how it was a Christmas miracle. Mary smiled and looked at the clock to see that it was just after midnight on Christmas. She closed her eyes and said a heartfelt, “Thank you Gabriel.” She didn’t get a response, nor did she expect one, but that was okay. The archangel had saved her son and that was more than she had dared to hope for. 

 

Gabriel had gotten his wish. They all lived long and happy lives. They never again needed to call on the other Gabriel, and he was glad. Dean had a real gift for working with his hands and went to college and became a structural engineer. He was both happy and surprised to receive the information about his trust fund from Gabriel on his twenty-first birthday. Once he had graduated, he took some time off and did some work with organization that built homes and apartments for the homeless, since he didn’t actually need to work for money. 

Sam too went to college, but his skills lay more along the lines of argument, much to his mother’s annoyance, and he went on to become a lawyer. He wasn’t as surprised to get his trust fund at twenty-one. He had known that if Gabriel had done it for Dean then he would have for Sam as well, and was already planning to practice pro-bono after graduation. 

Once Sam had gone off to college, Mary decided she would jump on the bandwagon too. She made sure to go to a different school, not wanting to embarrass either of her boys and she decided to become a teacher. She really missed having little ones around. Both of her sons were very supportive of her endeavors, and she ended up teaching first grade at the school the boys had attended when they were young. 

Sam was the first to be married and have a child. She had tears in her eyes when he told her that they named their new son Gabriel. She wasn’t surprised. Neither of the boys had ever forgotten the archangel that had saved them and helped raise them during their younger years, and that had died to protect them, taking their secrets to the grave. She thought it was fitting. 

Dean was happy for him, despite his annoyance. He had been planning to name his first son Gabriel too, but when he had a daughter he decided to name her Gabrielle. It would still be a little confusing, but Dean refused to give up the idea. He wanted to honor Gabriel too and he wouldn’t be stopped by anything. 

Both Sam and Dean and their families lived in the same town they had grown up in, so Mary often had a house full of her children and grandchildren. Sam went on to have three more children for a total of four and Dean had a total of three. Mary died happy at the ripe old age of ninety-two, followed by Dean ten years later and Sam seven years after that. The world didn’t see the apocalypse, neither Sam nor Dean ever went to hell, and the world, while just as screwed up as it always was, wasn’t made worse by the interference of the angels. It would be another twelve generations before they even found the bloodlines again, due to the change in name, and by then they weren’t viable for their purposes anymore so they had to start over. Gabriel had succeeded.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [In another time [art]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7422094) by [KD-art (KDHeart)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KDHeart/pseuds/KD-art)




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